The present disclosure generally relates to autonomous commercial vehicles.
Although research is underway to develop autonomous vehicles, much of the research has been directed toward autonomous passenger vehicles. Passenger vehicles, however, share the roads and highways with commercial vehicles that transport goods. Commercial vehicles include, for example, trucks and tractor-trailers, which primarily operate on highways and other high-grade roads.
Commercial vehicles, in particular, tractor-trailers, differ from passenger vehicles not only in size, but also in mechanical operation, as well as typical uses. Commercial vehicles, often referred to by people outside of the industry as “trucks,” are often described and envisioned as functioning the same as a passenger car. That mindset may be due to the fact that a “pick-up” truck is classified as approximately the same as a passenger car in terms of licensing and regulatory affairs and the word “truck” is applied to both commercial vehicles and “pick-up” trucks with casual abandon. While it is true that a passenger car and commercial vehicle both, in fact, perform the same function, i.e. the both carry freight from one location to another. The “freight” in a passenger car is human freight while in a commercial vehicle it is material cargo. The similarity at that junction ends. Passenger vehicles (and “pick-up” trucks) are responsible for the relatively short range delivery of the driver (and sometimes a few passengers) from one location to another with little to no advance warning, planning, or logistics involved.
Commercial vehicles, on the other hand, are commissioned (i.e., paid) to deliver tens of thousands of pounds of cargo from one location to another with demanding schedules, narrow windows for pickup and delivery, regulatory limits on the drive time, and conflicting priorities. An autonomous commercial vehicle lacks a full-time human driver, who would typically accomplish these tasks.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improvements to autonomous commercial vehicles.